With his latest tweets extolling himself for “being, like, really smart” anda “very stable genius ,” President Trump treads all-too-familiar ground. Hislong record as a braggart is well known; the new examples change nothing.Those who find the president’s narcissism refreshing or appealing will go ondoing so. Those who find it cringe-inducing now have fresh reason to beappalled.

I’m in the latter camp, and not only when it comes to Trump. One of thethings I hate most about politicians is the egotism in which so many of themmarinate. It takes considerable hubris to deem yourself fit to governothers, all the more so when you don’t just harbor that feeling privately,but invest time, effort, and money into proclaiming your wonderfulness toanyone who will listen.

This isn’t a partisan animus. In Arguable a few months ago I remarked thatboth the Republican incumbent and his Democratic predecessor were “a matchedset when it comes to bloated self-regard” — a pair of egotists with swelledheads, “whose enormous opinion of themselves was never warranted by theirachievements.”

Lest we forget, however, this isn’t the norm. Many American presidents,perhaps even most, have usually known better than to beat their chests andboast of their own glory:

George Washington copied by hand 110 “rules of civility” that he strove touphold all his life. One of those rules was that “a man ought not to valuehimself of his achievements, or rare qualities of wit; much less of hisriches, virtue, or kindred” — ought not, that is, to brag of hisaccomplishments or wealth or ability.

Abraham Lincoln, though intensely ambitious, was exceptional in hishumility. The higher he climbed in politics, the more he subordinated hisego to the interests of the nation. As president-elect, Lincoln didn’tostracize the men who had sought to defeat him; he invited them to join hisadministration. During the Civil War, to mention one other example, Lincolnstrongly opposed the strategy Gen. Ulysses Grant devised to captureVicksburg. Yet when Grant’s approach proved victorious, thecommander-in-chief made a point of conceding his error — in writing. “Ifeared it was a mistake,” he wrote to Grant, referring to the general’sbattle plan. “I now wish to make the personal acknowledgment that you wereright, and I was wrong.”

James Garfield was an extraordinary American, who rose from being a schooljanitor to serving as the 20th president of the United States. He was also aparadigm of modesty and restraint. “I suppose I am morbidly sensitive aboutany reference to my own achievements,” said Garfield, whose life andpresidency were cut short by an assassin’s bullet. “I so much despise a manwho blows his own horn that I go to the other extreme.”

President James Garfield: "I so much despise a man who blows his own horn"

In her touching 2001 book on Ronald Reagan’s life and personality, WhenCharacter Was King , his one-time speechwriter Peggy Noonan remarks thatwhen she wants to convey the essence of Reagan’s nature to people who didn’tknow him personally, she tells the “the bathroom story.” The incidentoccurred during his first year as president, when he was in the hospitalrecovering from being shot. He got out of bed one night, still weak andsomewhat shaky, to use the bathroom.

He slapped water on his face, and water slopped out of the sink. He got somepaper towels and got down on the floor to clean it up. An aide came in andsaid, 'Mr. President, what are you doing? We have people for that.' AndReagan said oh, no, he was just cleaning up his mess, he didn't want a nurseto have to do it.

As recently as George W. Bush, the White House was occupied by a presidentwho, like his father , had been raised to eschew “the Great I Am.” Thoughhis performance in office was marked by considerable steel, and though hewas often deluged with furious criticism, Bush never felt the need totrumpet his intellectual prowess or sing his own praises. On the contrary,he was given to self-deprecation. Speaking at the 300th Yale commencement afew months after taking office, Bush recalled his less-than-stellar studentdays, good-naturedly telling the graduates: “C students — you too can bepresident.”

Last summer, at the end of a joint public interview with Bill Clinton, Bushwas asked by the moderator, philanthropist David Rubenstein, to identify thetrait that matters most in being president: “Is the quality that’s mostimportant hard work, intelligence, optimism, luck — what do you think ittakes?”

Bush didn’t hesitate.

“Humility,” he answered at once. “I think it’s really important to know whatyou don’t know — and to listen to people who do know what you don’t know.”

Of course there is no guarantee that presidents who behave with humilitywill achieve greatness. But this you can take to the bank: Presidents whocan’t stop bragging about how great they are will assuredly never be great.

Rat on your neighbors? There’s an app for that

In China, as in all totalitarian-ruled countries, citizens are urged toinform on each other. Communist governments have from the outset deployedsecret police to punish dissent, and the secret police have alwayscultivated networks of snitches. Regimes that claim an absolute monopoly ontruth cannot abide independent thought or grassroots criticism. In theinterests of exterminating heterodoxy, the totalitarians balk at nothing.

In 2017, that includes the use of digital technology to make informingeasier than ever.

The Wall Street Journal reported recently on the Communist Party’s rolloutof an app in Zhejiang province that “offers citizens rewards for informationas part of a new government effort to meld old-school totalitariantechniques with 21st-century e-commerce, big data, and digitalsurveillance.”

The Journal explains how the app, called “Safe Zhejiang” — encroachments onfreedom and privacy are always rationalized in the name of safety — works:

The . . . app enables users to notify authorities of problems ranging fromleaky drains and domestic disputes to traffic violations and illegalpublications, in text or photographic form, as long as the informants revealtheir location and identity.

In exchange, they get perks including discounts at upmarket coffee shops andcoupons for taxi-hailing and music-streaming services. . . .

China already is building one of the world’s most sophisticated systems formonitoring its citizens covertly using facial-recognition cameras, customerdata from big technology companies and a nascent “social credit” system thatrates online and real world behavior.

The party leadership now wants citizens to volunteer information that wouldallow the state to monitor them even more closely, discourage them fromprotesting or petitioning, and create vast pools of data on publicgrievances and local officials’ performance.

Apps like “Safe Zhejiang” are being rolled out in many cities and provinces,with plans to integrate and cross-reference the information obtained withother data sets and video-surveillance footage, according to people involvedin the apps. . . .

One notice on Zhejiang’s Tongxiang city government website said users shouldreport on marital and other disputes, and on people who could “affect socialstability,” including members of the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement,elderly petitioners, drug addicts and the mentally ill.

But the Party has run into a problem. The peasants aren’t cooperating.

Resistance so far has been stiff, principally from citizens who resent beingforced to use a surveillance tool, or fear official retribution for voicingtheir concerns. For some, it smacks of the Mao era, when the party gathereddetailed files on citizens and incentivized them to inform on each other. ..

Chinese people generally appear less concerned about data privacy than mostWesterners. The lukewarm reception to the apps, however, suggests there arelimits to how far they will willingly submit to China’s expandingsurveillance state, and that many aren’t prepared to volunteer informationto the government.

In democratic societies, widespread active rejection of a government policytypically forces authorities to retreat. Sometimes that happens under thepressure of public opposition itself. Sometimes it happens because the partyout of power exploits the dissatisfaction to challenge the government inelections.

But that isn’t how totalitarian societies work. As the Journal’s reporters,Jeremy Page and Eva Dou, point out, the alternative to voluntary cooperationwith the Communist Party’s surveillance regime is apt to be coercion.

Beijing . . . wants to preserve party rule with the help of technology thatallows it to keep closer tabs on citizens, while also appearing responsiveto their needs. If experiments such as the apps fail, the party might relymore on the kind of intrusive surveillance technology it has pioneered inits Muslim northwest, where residents run a gantlet of checkpoints, cameras,and scanners checking ID cards, faces, and eyeballs.

Here in the West, policymakers, journalists, civil libertarians, and othersengage in vigorous debates about how to keep digital giants from breakingthrough the guardrails on which freedom depends. Just yesterday, to take anexample close to home, The Boston Globe’s editorial page resolved to focusin 2018 on advocating for “more transparency and tighter regulations forGoogle and Facebook,” and on exploring how to balance First Amendmentliberties with European-style Internet privacy rules, like the so-called“right to be forgotten.”

There are no such debates in Communist countries, where the first andhighest function of technology is to strengthen those in power. Eugene Chow,exploring “The Dark Side of China’s Tech Boom ” in The Diplomat last August,described how China has turned the nation’s ubiquitous smartphones intotools of “unprecedented control” over its citizens. “Thanks to China’sInternet giants – Baidu, Tencent, and Alibaba – the authoritarian regime nowhas the means to monitor a user’s every action, purchase, thought, andlocation in real time,” he noted. Pressuring people to use those smartphonesto report on their neighbors and co-workers is a logical next step.

The reports of “stiff” resistance are heartening, but China’s government hasfaced public resistance in the past. Its response has usually been to crackdown with redoubled severity. And crackdowns are facilitated by informers.

For Beijing’s rulers, the practice of turning citizens into domestic spieshas a frightful pedigree. Here is a brief passage from The Cold War, thesweeping new history by Odd Arne Westead of the 20th century’s globalideological rivalry. He is recounting one element of Mao’s CulturalRevolution, which convulsed China in the 1960s and 1970:

One of Mao’s intentions in the Cultural Revolution was to set the youngagainst the old. In a country where tradition venerated the elderly, theirhold on society needed to be broken. . . . Red Guards, sometimes as young as12 or 13, were encouraged to report on their parents or grandparents. Attimes older members of the family were captured as a result of suchdenunciation, beaten, or sent away to labor camps. One family . . . saw boththe father and the grandfather taken by Red Guards after they had beenreported on by the youngest son. The boy, 14 at the time, participated intheir public humiliation and torture. The grandfather died as a result. Thepattern was repeated a million times over across China.

The methods used by the Chinese Communist Party under Xi Jinping may not beas publicly savage as they were under Mao. But of their savagery there is noquestion — from torture and the repression of minorities to the“disappearing” of human rights defenders and forcible extraction of vitalorgans from peaceful Falun Dafa practitioners. Beyond the skyscrapers andthe consumer electronics, China remains a land under tyranny, whose rulersdemand obedience from their 1.3 billion subjects.

Optimists once believed that information technology would make libertyunstoppable and Communist regimes unsustainable. But fax machines didn’tkeep the tanks out of Tiananmen Square. The Internet didn’t rescue Nobellaureate Liu Xiaobo from death in a Chinese dungeon. And it will take a lotmore than disabling the government’s new snitching app to end Beijing’smalevolent surveillance of China’s men, women, and children.

Now this is public service

Politicians like to call themselves “public servants,” but my usualimpression is that they are considerably more interested in servingthemselves. Admittedly, my cynicism may have something to do with the factthat I live in Massachusetts, where news stories about elected officialsfrequently include such terms as “arrested,” “indicted,” or “ convicted.”Back around the time I started following Massachusetts politics, a New YorkTimes story reported that “corruption in state and local government inMassachusetts” had become “a way of life,'' so much so “that bribery,extortion, tax evasion, illegal campaign contributions, and the launderingof money to disguise its origins were commonplace.” That made an impression.

The death of Robert Q. Crane on Friday recalled a classic example of thesleazy political culture that Massachusetts all but takes for granted. Craneheld public office for 35 years, 26 of them as state treasurer. “Through itall,” as the Globe observed in its obituary, “Crane retained an unwaveringdevotion to the fine art of political patronage. . . . As relatives andfriends of state officials and legislators found their way onto the payroll,he resolutely dismissed any suggestion that patronage” be curtailed. Craneindulged for decades in what Tammany Hall boss George Washington Plunkittcalled “honest graft,” using his office and its powers to benefit himselfand enrich his friends.

But they’re not all bums! Some officeholders, even in Massachusetts, reallydo go into politics because they are committed to serving the public. And ifI don’t hesitate to scorn the bad apples, I figure I should be just asdiligent about applauding the good guys.

So let me now praise Donald R. Berthiaume Jr., a state representative fromSpencer, Mass., who spends snowy winter days getting the driveways and frontwalks of constituents cleared of snow. I don’t mean he calls Town Hall todemand that the Public Works Department to send a crew out to do it. I meanhe plows and shovels them out himself.

Reporter Kim Ring of the Worcester Telegram & Gazette accompanied Berthiaumerecently as he got in his truck and headed out to do some good:

[W]ith the defroster blasting, a heated leather seat under him, and a coffeein hand, he drove off to the home of Robert and Carol McPherson and droppedhis plow.

“Sometimes they leave me cookies,” he said of the couple, both seniorcitizens who couldn’t clear the snow themselves. “I don’t take any money.”

He said he saw their daughter, Beth, clearing snow from the ramp in herwheelchair and thought she shouldn’t have to do that, even if she wanted to,so he grabbed a shovel and cleared a path. . .

For a legislator a snow day might mean staying home, watching a movie withthe kids, or catching up on paperwork, but even before he held the seat inthe House of Representatives, the Spencer Republican was plowing driveways,making repairs to homes where veterans or senior citizens live or laboringon a project for the town.

“I just like to help people,” he said. “I usually can’t say no.”

Headed south on Route 31 a car was stopped in the street as a small grouptried to clear a mound of snow that was blocking a driveway.

Without a thought, Mr. Berthiaume swung across the street and pushed backthe snow with a few swipes of the plow blade. He waved and drove off as theshovelers waved back with confused looks and smiles on their faces.

Mr. Berthiaume plowed out another driveway where a woman lives alone afterlosing her daughter.

“She’d take you in off the street,” he said, maneuvering the truck to pushthe snow back far enough to leave room for the next storm’s accumulation.

I’ve never met Berthiaume. But Ring, who has covered Worcester-area politicsfor years, tells me in an email that the state legislator is a genuine“tell-it-like-it-is country boy who hates red tape and wants to find easiersolutions to things.” Often, the easiest solution he can find to a problemis to take care of it himself.

Are there other Berthiaumes out there? In 2015, WBZ-TV reported on anotherstate rep who picked up a shovel after a heavy snowstorm and got to work:

The sidewalks on the Park Street Bridge in West Roxbury haven’t been clearedsince last Tuesday’s blizzard, and even more snow has fallen after that. Sostate Rep. Ed Coppinger of Boston decided to take matters into his ownhands.

“I received calls saying it was unsafe. I drove by and witnessed it wasunsafe,” Coppinger said. He decided to start shoveling the snow himself.

“It took an hour, hour-and-a-half. Wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, Iexpected a lot worse.”

Yes, I know: Legislators aren’t elected to clear snow. But give me asnow-shoveling politician any day over one who thinks the solution to mostproblems is to pass a law, or spend public money, or issue a press release.Lawmakers whose idea of public service is to pull on their boots and fixwhat needs fixing are the kind of lawmakers who — if only there were more ofthem — could neutralize the cynicism with which many of us regard politics.

Are there more of them? The floor is open for nominations: Do you know ofelected officials whose idea of public service is to roll up their sleevesand personally make things better? If so, I’d like to hear about them. Sendme the details, and I’ll share them with Arguable’s readers.

ICYMI

My Sunday column — the first of 2018 — stemmed from a recent visit toTaiwan, which convinced me that Taiwan not only isn’t a part of China in thepolitical sense, it isn’t a part of China in the national sense, either. Amajority of Taiwan’s residents once considered themselves to belong to theChinese nation. Today, after 30 years of democracy, the national identity ofmost of Taiwan’s population is exclusively Taiwanese. There is no longer“One China” on the two sides of the Taiwan Strait. There is one China andone Taiwan, and the world should stop pretending that isn’t the case.

Enjoy reading Arguable? Please tweet the good word to your followers!

My last column of 2017 threw cold water on the oft-repeated claim thatRepublicans in states like Alabama engage in “voter suppression” to keepblacks from casting ballots. Actually, the ones dousing that claim with coldwater were Alabama’s black voters, who turned out for last month’s specialSenate election at such a high rate that it surpassed their percentage ofthe population. Requiring voters to show an ID when they vote may or may notbe a useful policy, but it certainly doesn’t keep motivated minorities fromvoting. That, too, is something we should stop pretending isn’t the case.

Wild Wild Web

In Scotland, every clan has its tartan. Including the Jews.

Amazing images of baby animals in the womb.

Two dozen stunning European libraries.

From caterpillar to butterfly in three minutes.

Fried-egg art.

The last line

"We do not always know where ideas will lead us. Better, then, to considercarefully the risks we are willing to take to achieve good results, in ordernot to replicate the terible toll that the 20th century took in its searchfor perfection." — Odd Arne Westad, The Cold War (2017)

________________________________________

Thank you for reading Arguable! If you liked this newsletter, please forwardit to a friend. If a friend sent it to you, you can subscribe for yourself.Just go here: http://bitly.com/Arguable. (It's free.)

I invite you to follow me on Twitter (@jeff_jacoby) and on Facebook. And Iwelcome your feedback — send your reactions, rebuttals, and reproaches to***@globe.com (or just reply to this newsletter).

Arguable will be off next week in observance of Martin Luther King Day. Lookfor the next issue the following Monday. Have a great fortnight!

Post by Michael Ejercitohttp://view.email.bostonglobe.com/?qs=ff7dd90a6c64ac74506b407474021439b41c3674b27ea9b57055263201fb63cc376b667328c70c69c3d83a57ad48cf8febcdef8e7a5e4b4d07793f25b8cc0ff8fdeec96256f84a728830fdcf16ef5f94View web versionThe Boston GlobeArguable - with Jeff JacobyMonday, January 8, 2018The Great I AmWith his latest tweets extolling himself for “being, like, really smart” anda “very stable genius ,” President Trump treads all-too-familiar ground. Hislong record as a braggart is well known; the new examples change nothing.Those who find the president’s narcissism refreshing or appealing will go ondoing so. Those who find it cringe-inducing now have fresh reason to beappalled.I’m in the latter camp, and not only when it comes to Trump. One of thethings I hate most about politicians is the egotism in which so many of themmarinate. It takes considerable hubris to deem yourself fit to governothers, all the more so when you don’t just harbor that feeling privately,but invest time, effort, and money into proclaiming your wonderfulness toanyone who will listen.This isn’t a partisan animus. In Arguable a few months ago I remarked thatboth the Republican incumbent and his Democratic predecessor were “a matchedset when it comes to bloated self-regard” — a pair of egotists with swelledheads, “whose enormous opinion of themselves was never warranted by theirachievements.”Lest we forget, however, this isn’t the norm. Many American presidents,perhaps even most, have usually known better than to beat their chests andGeorge Washington copied by hand 110 “rules of civility” that he strove touphold all his life. One of those rules was that “a man ought not to valuehimself of his achievements, or rare qualities of wit; much less of hisriches, virtue, or kindred” — ought not, that is, to brag of hisaccomplishments or wealth or ability.Abraham Lincoln, though intensely ambitious, was exceptional in hishumility. The higher he climbed in politics, the more he subordinated hisego to the interests of the nation. As president-elect, Lincoln didn’tostracize the men who had sought to defeat him; he invited them to join hisadministration. During the Civil War, to mention one other example, Lincolnstrongly opposed the strategy Gen. Ulysses Grant devised to captureVicksburg. Yet when Grant’s approach proved victorious, thecommander-in-chief made a point of conceding his error — in writing. “Ifeared it was a mistake,” he wrote to Grant, referring to the general’sbattle plan. “I now wish to make the personal acknowledgment that you wereright, and I was wrong.”James Garfield was an extraordinary American, who rose from being a schooljanitor to serving as the 20th president of the United States. He was also aparadigm of modesty and restraint. “I suppose I am morbidly sensitive aboutany reference to my own achievements,” said Garfield, whose life andpresidency were cut short by an assassin’s bullet. “I so much despise a manwho blows his own horn that I go to the other extreme.”President James Garfield: "I so much despise a man who blows his own horn"In her touching 2001 book on Ronald Reagan’s life and personality, WhenCharacter Was King , his one-time speechwriter Peggy Noonan remarks thatwhen she wants to convey the essence of Reagan’s nature to people who didn’tknow him personally, she tells the “the bathroom story.” The incidentoccurred during his first year as president, when he was in the hospitalrecovering from being shot. He got out of bed one night, still weak andsomewhat shaky, to use the bathroom.He slapped water on his face, and water slopped out of the sink. He got somepaper towels and got down on the floor to clean it up. An aide came in andsaid, 'Mr. President, what are you doing? We have people for that.' AndReagan said oh, no, he was just cleaning up his mess, he didn't want a nurseto have to do it.As recently as George W. Bush, the White House was occupied by a presidentwho, like his father , had been raised to eschew “the Great I Am.” Thoughhis performance in office was marked by considerable steel, and though hewas often deluged with furious criticism, Bush never felt the need totrumpet his intellectual prowess or sing his own praises. On the contrary,he was given to self-deprecation. Speaking at the 300th Yale commencement afew months after taking office, Bush recalled his less-than-stellar studentdays, good-naturedly telling the graduates: “C students — you too can bepresident.”Last summer, at the end of a joint public interview with Bill Clinton, Bushwas asked by the moderator, philanthropist David Rubenstein, to identify thetrait that matters most in being president: “Is the quality that’s mostimportant hard work, intelligence, optimism, luck — what do you think ittakes?”Bush didn’t hesitate.“Humility,” he answered at once. “I think it’s really important to know whatyou don’t know — and to listen to people who do know what you don’t know.”Of course there is no guarantee that presidents who behave with humilitywill achieve greatness. But this you can take to the bank: Presidents whocan’t stop bragging about how great they are will assuredly never be great.Rat on your neighbors? There’s an app for thatIn China, as in all totalitarian-ruled countries, citizens are urged toinform on each other. Communist governments have from the outset deployedsecret police to punish dissent, and the secret police have alwayscultivated networks of snitches. Regimes that claim an absolute monopoly ontruth cannot abide independent thought or grassroots criticism. In theinterests of exterminating heterodoxy, the totalitarians balk at nothing.In 2017, that includes the use of digital technology to make informingeasier than ever.The Wall Street Journal reported recently on the Communist Party’s rolloutof an app in Zhejiang province that “offers citizens rewards for informationas part of a new government effort to meld old-school totalitariantechniques with 21st-century e-commerce, big data, and digitalsurveillance.”The Journal explains how the app, called “Safe Zhejiang” — encroachments onThe . . . app enables users to notify authorities of problems ranging fromleaky drains and domestic disputes to traffic violations and illegalpublications, in text or photographic form, as long as the informants revealtheir location and identity.In exchange, they get perks including discounts at upmarket coffee shops andcoupons for taxi-hailing and music-streaming services. . . .China already is building one of the world’s most sophisticated systems formonitoring its citizens covertly using facial-recognition cameras, customerdata from big technology companies and a nascent “social credit” system thatrates online and real world behavior.The party leadership now wants citizens to volunteer information that wouldallow the state to monitor them even more closely, discourage them fromprotesting or petitioning, and create vast pools of data on publicgrievances and local officials’ performance.Apps like “Safe Zhejiang” are being rolled out in many cities and provinces,with plans to integrate and cross-reference the information obtained withother data sets and video-surveillance footage, according to people involvedin the apps. . . .One notice on Zhejiang’s Tongxiang city government website said users shouldreport on marital and other disputes, and on people who could “affect socialstability,” including members of the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement,elderly petitioners, drug addicts and the mentally ill.But the Party has run into a problem. The peasants aren’t cooperating.Resistance so far has been stiff, principally from citizens who resent beingforced to use a surveillance tool, or fear official retribution for voicingtheir concerns. For some, it smacks of the Mao era, when the party gathereddetailed files on citizens and incentivized them to inform on each other. ..Chinese people generally appear less concerned about data privacy than mostWesterners. The lukewarm reception to the apps, however, suggests there arelimits to how far they will willingly submit to China’s expandingsurveillance state, and that many aren’t prepared to volunteer informationto the government.In democratic societies, widespread active rejection of a government policytypically forces authorities to retreat. Sometimes that happens under thepressure of public opposition itself. Sometimes it happens because the partyout of power exploits the dissatisfaction to challenge the government inelections.But that isn’t how totalitarian societies work. As the Journal’s reporters,Jeremy Page and Eva Dou, point out, the alternative to voluntary cooperationwith the Communist Party’s surveillance regime is apt to be coercion.Beijing . . . wants to preserve party rule with the help of technology thatallows it to keep closer tabs on citizens, while also appearing responsiveto their needs. If experiments such as the apps fail, the party might relymore on the kind of intrusive surveillance technology it has pioneered inits Muslim northwest, where residents run a gantlet of checkpoints, cameras,and scanners checking ID cards, faces, and eyeballs.Here in the West, policymakers, journalists, civil libertarians, and othersengage in vigorous debates about how to keep digital giants from breakingthrough the guardrails on which freedom depends. Just yesterday, to take anexample close to home, The Boston Globe’s editorial page resolved to focusin 2018 on advocating for “more transparency and tighter regulations forGoogle and Facebook,” and on exploring how to balance First Amendmentliberties with European-style Internet privacy rules, like the so-called“right to be forgotten.”There are no such debates in Communist countries, where the first andhighest function of technology is to strengthen those in power. Eugene Chow,exploring “The Dark Side of China’s Tech Boom ” in The Diplomat last August,described how China has turned the nation’s ubiquitous smartphones intotools of “unprecedented control” over its citizens. “Thanks to China’sInternet giants – Baidu, Tencent, and Alibaba – the authoritarian regime nowhas the means to monitor a user’s every action, purchase, thought, andlocation in real time,” he noted. Pressuring people to use those smartphonesto report on their neighbors and co-workers is a logical next step.The reports of “stiff” resistance are heartening, but China’s government hasfaced public resistance in the past. Its response has usually been to crackdown with redoubled severity. And crackdowns are facilitated by informers.For Beijing’s rulers, the practice of turning citizens into domestic spieshas a frightful pedigree. Here is a brief passage from The Cold War, thesweeping new history by Odd Arne Westead of the 20th century’s globalideological rivalry. He is recounting one element of Mao’s CulturalOne of Mao’s intentions in the Cultural Revolution was to set the youngagainst the old. In a country where tradition venerated the elderly, theirhold on society needed to be broken. . . . Red Guards, sometimes as young as12 or 13, were encouraged to report on their parents or grandparents. Attimes older members of the family were captured as a result of suchdenunciation, beaten, or sent away to labor camps. One family . . . saw boththe father and the grandfather taken by Red Guards after they had beenreported on by the youngest son. The boy, 14 at the time, participated intheir public humiliation and torture. The grandfather died as a result. Thepattern was repeated a million times over across China.The methods used by the Chinese Communist Party under Xi Jinping may not beas publicly savage as they were under Mao. But of their savagery there is noquestion — from torture and the repression of minorities to the“disappearing” of human rights defenders and forcible extraction of vitalorgans from peaceful Falun Dafa practitioners. Beyond the skyscrapers andthe consumer electronics, China remains a land under tyranny, whose rulersdemand obedience from their 1.3 billion subjects.Optimists once believed that information technology would make libertyunstoppable and Communist regimes unsustainable. But fax machines didn’tkeep the tanks out of Tiananmen Square. The Internet didn’t rescue Nobellaureate Liu Xiaobo from death in a Chinese dungeon. And it will take a lotmore than disabling the government’s new snitching app to end Beijing’smalevolent surveillance of China’s men, women, and children.Now this is public servicePoliticians like to call themselves “public servants,” but my usualimpression is that they are considerably more interested in servingthemselves. Admittedly, my cynicism may have something to do with the factthat I live in Massachusetts, where news stories about elected officialsfrequently include such terms as “arrested,” “indicted,” or “ convicted.”Back around the time I started following Massachusetts politics, a New YorkTimes story reported that “corruption in state and local government inMassachusetts” had become “a way of life,'' so much so “that bribery,extortion, tax evasion, illegal campaign contributions, and the launderingof money to disguise its origins were commonplace.” That made an impression.The death of Robert Q. Crane on Friday recalled a classic example of thesleazy political culture that Massachusetts all but takes for granted. Craneheld public office for 35 years, 26 of them as state treasurer. “Through itall,” as the Globe observed in its obituary, “Crane retained an unwaveringdevotion to the fine art of political patronage. . . . As relatives andfriends of state officials and legislators found their way onto the payroll,he resolutely dismissed any suggestion that patronage” be curtailed. Craneindulged for decades in what Tammany Hall boss George Washington Plunkittcalled “honest graft,” using his office and its powers to benefit himselfand enrich his friends.But they’re not all bums! Some officeholders, even in Massachusetts, reallydo go into politics because they are committed to serving the public. And ifI don’t hesitate to scorn the bad apples, I figure I should be just asdiligent about applauding the good guys.Massachusetts state Representative Donald Berthiaume gets ready to plow somesnow.So let me now praise Donald R. Berthiaume Jr., a state representative fromSpencer, Mass., who spends snowy winter days getting the driveways and frontwalks of constituents cleared of snow. I don’t mean he calls Town Hall todemand that the Public Works Department to send a crew out to do it. I meanhe plows and shovels them out himself.Reporter Kim Ring of the Worcester Telegram & Gazette accompanied Berthiaume[W]ith the defroster blasting, a heated leather seat under him, and a coffeein hand, he drove off to the home of Robert and Carol McPherson and droppedhis plow.“Sometimes they leave me cookies,” he said of the couple, both seniorcitizens who couldn’t clear the snow themselves. “I don’t take any money.”He said he saw their daughter, Beth, clearing snow from the ramp in herwheelchair and thought she shouldn’t have to do that, even if she wanted to,so he grabbed a shovel and cleared a path. . .For a legislator a snow day might mean staying home, watching a movie withthe kids, or catching up on paperwork, but even before he held the seat inthe House of Representatives, the Spencer Republican was plowing driveways,making repairs to homes where veterans or senior citizens live or laboringon a project for the town.“I just like to help people,” he said. “I usually can’t say no.”Headed south on Route 31 a car was stopped in the street as a small grouptried to clear a mound of snow that was blocking a driveway.Without a thought, Mr. Berthiaume swung across the street and pushed backthe snow with a few swipes of the plow blade. He waved and drove off as theshovelers waved back with confused looks and smiles on their faces.Mr. Berthiaume plowed out another driveway where a woman lives alone afterlosing her daughter.“She’d take you in off the street,” he said, maneuvering the truck to pushthe snow back far enough to leave room for the next storm’s accumulation.I’ve never met Berthiaume. But Ring, who has covered Worcester-area politicsfor years, tells me in an email that the state legislator is a genuine“tell-it-like-it-is country boy who hates red tape and wants to find easiersolutions to things.” Often, the easiest solution he can find to a problemis to take care of it himself.Are there other Berthiaumes out there? In 2015, WBZ-TV reported on anotherThe sidewalks on the Park Street Bridge in West Roxbury haven’t been clearedsince last Tuesday’s blizzard, and even more snow has fallen after that. Sostate Rep. Ed Coppinger of Boston decided to take matters into his ownhands.“I received calls saying it was unsafe. I drove by and witnessed it wasunsafe,” Coppinger said. He decided to start shoveling the snow himself.“It took an hour, hour-and-a-half. Wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, Iexpected a lot worse.”Yes, I know: Legislators aren’t elected to clear snow. But give me asnow-shoveling politician any day over one who thinks the solution to mostproblems is to pass a law, or spend public money, or issue a press release.Lawmakers whose idea of public service is to pull on their boots and fixwhat needs fixing are the kind of lawmakers who — if only there were more ofthem — could neutralize the cynicism with which many of us regard politics.Are there more of them? The floor is open for nominations: Do you know ofelected officials whose idea of public service is to roll up their sleevesand personally make things better? If so, I’d like to hear about them. Sendme the details, and I’ll share them with Arguable’s readers.ICYMIMy Sunday column — the first of 2018 — stemmed from a recent visit toTaiwan, which convinced me that Taiwan not only isn’t a part of China in thepolitical sense, it isn’t a part of China in the national sense, either. Amajority of Taiwan’s residents once considered themselves to belong to theChinese nation. Today, after 30 years of democracy, the national identity ofmost of Taiwan’s population is exclusively Taiwanese. There is no longer“One China” on the two sides of the Taiwan Strait. There is one China andone Taiwan, and the world should stop pretending that isn’t the case.Enjoy reading Arguable? Please tweet the good word to your followers!My last column of 2017 threw cold water on the oft-repeated claim thatRepublicans in states like Alabama engage in “voter suppression” to keepblacks from casting ballots. Actually, the ones dousing that claim with coldwater were Alabama’s black voters, who turned out for last month’s specialSenate election at such a high rate that it surpassed their percentage ofthe population. Requiring voters to show an ID when they vote may or may notbe a useful policy, but it certainly doesn’t keep motivated minorities fromvoting. That, too, is something we should stop pretending isn’t the case.Wild Wild WebIn Scotland, every clan has its tartan. Including the Jews.Amazing images of baby animals in the womb.Two dozen stunning European libraries.From caterpillar to butterfly in three minutes.Fried-egg art.The last line"We do not always know where ideas will lead us. Better, then, to considercarefully the risks we are willing to take to achieve good results, in ordernot to replicate the terible toll that the 20th century took in its searchfor perfection." — Odd Arne Westad, The Cold War (2017)________________________________________Thank you for reading Arguable! If you liked this newsletter, please forwardit to a friend. If a friend sent it to you, you can subscribe for yourself.Just go here: http://bitly.com/Arguable. (It's free.)welcome your feedback — send your reactions, rebuttals, and reproaches toArguable will be off next week in observance of Martin Luther King Day. Lookfor the next issue the following Monday. Have a great fortnight!---This email has been checked for viruses by AVG.http://www.avg.com

"Actually, it is obvious he's not all there. Most wannabes are shorton IQ and have severe mental problems. I have yet to see a post fromthis cretin that makes sense. Usually, he just does his "You are aNazi........." and even *that* he aped from some other imbecile. Hisother attempts at posting in usenet usually consist of one line oreven one word drivel."- Boadicea, about GBLTP dreckgook Ejershito

Post by The PeelerWell, for one, SMART and EDUCATED people care about a smart, educated Jew'sopinion, you stupid gay nazi sow!

The Judenvolk are his moral superiors; that is why he hates them so much.

Ever notice that he consistently pretend to BE a Jewish poster?

Do you suppose he wears a kippah when he posts? Or maybe even atefillin!

___________"I don't even have the heart to tell him I've never lived inArizona."- Me, acknowledging that I lied from the *very beginning*, andtormented the gullible Gordon for MONTHS while sitting back andwatching him come up with pathetic excuse after pathetic excuse fornot coming to holocaust me.

Post by Michael Ejercito"Actually, it is obvious he's not all there. Most wannabes are shorton IQ and have severe mental problems. I have yet to see a post fromthis cretin that makes sense. Usually, he just does his "You are aJew........." and even *that* he aped from some other imbecile. Hisother attempts at posting in usenet usually consist of one line oreven one word drivel."- Boadicea, about GBLTP dreckgook Radovich

That's quite the condemnation, there, Gordon!

Thinking now of upping your game for 2018, or can we expect the same "aping" that you usually do?

Ludwig Lenz worked at the Sex Research Institute in Berlin, which wasdestroyed by Hitler's Brown Shirts in 1933 likely because its records,including 40,000 confessions from members of the Nazi Party, wouldhave exposed the sexual perversions of Nazi leadership. Lenz said that"not ten percent of the men who, in 1933, took the fate of Germany intotheir hands, were sexually normal."

In fact, the Nazi Party began in a gay bar in Munich, and Ernst Roehm,Hitler's right hand in the early days of Nazism, was well-known for histaste in young boys. William Shirer says in his definitive "Rise andFall of the Third Reich," not only that Roehm was "important in therise of Hitler," but also "like so many of the early Nazis, (he was)a homosexual."

Post by The JewsEver notice that he consistently pretend to BE a Jewish poster?Do you suppose he wears a kippah when he posts? Or maybe even atefillin!

In addition to his sitting on his favourite XXXXXL-sized, special nazi-dildo? LOL

You just aroused him.

ROFLMJAO

it should not surprise us.https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.culture.israel/jhQcsUjgrOs/4N9RTnxKBgAJhttp://www.renewamerica.com/columns/fischer/080515<quote>Ludwig Lenz worked at the Sex Research Institute in Berlin, which wasdestroyed by Hitler's Brown Shirts in 1933 likely because its records,including 40,000 confessions from members of the Nazi Party, wouldhave exposed the sexual perversions of Nazi leadership. Lenz said that"not ten percent of the men who, in 1933, took the fate of Germany intotheir hands, were sexually normal."In fact, the Nazi Party began in a gay bar in Munich, and Ernst Roehm,Hitler's right hand in the early days of Nazism, was well-known for histaste in young boys. William Shirer says in his definitive "Rise andFall of the Third Reich," not only that Roehm was "important in therise of Hitler," but also "like so many of the early Nazis, (he was)a homosexual."</quote>---This email has been checked for viruses by AVG.http://www.avg.com

"Actually, it is obvious he's not all there. Most wannabes are shorton IQ and have severe mental problems. I have yet to see a post fromthis cretin that makes sense. Usually, he just does his "You are aNazi........." and even *that* he aped from some other imbecile. Hisother attempts at posting in usenet usually consist of one line oreven one word drivel."- Boadicea, about GBLTP dreckgook Ejershito

Gordon Radovich [***@tiscali.co.uk], the anally-obsessed,unemployable, impotent, glue-huffing, passportless, rope-dodging,pedophilic, bestiality-practicing Serbian coprophiliac nazi-wannabe,hated by Hitler and proven by White Nationalist Scholars to beinferior to Asian peoples, tried to cover up his abject fear of thefascist-slapping, nazi-tormenting, totalitarian-taunting, superiorJews that torture him daily, and reveal his complete and totalignorance, and expose his countless excuses to avoid gettingNuremberged®, by taking time out of his busy schedule of felching hismother for spending money and then masturbating to kiddie porn to lie

"Actually, it is obvious he's not all there. Most wannabes are shorton IQ and have severe mental problems. I have yet to see a post fromthis cretin that makes sense. Usually, he just does his "You are aNazi........." and even *that* he aped from some other imbecile. Hisother attempts at posting in usenet usually consist of one line oreven one word drivel."- Boadicea, about GBLTP dreckgook Ejershito

"Actually, it is obvious he's not all there. Most wannabes are shorton IQ and have severe mental problems. I have yet to see a post fromthis cretin that makes sense. Usually, he just does his "You are aNazi........." and even *that* he aped from some other imbecile. Hisother attempts at posting in usenet usually consist of one line oreven one word drivel."- Boadicea, about GBLTP dreckgook Ejershito

Dreckgook, you your fellow jewlovers and the jews whose fat jewani/recti you zsuck are the subvermin here.

Nithing, there is nothing wrong with Jews.Michael

Dreckgook, there absolutely IS.

"Were it not for the accident of my excretion, I would be'anti-semitic'®. Any subpeople that have been persecuted for 2000years must be doing something wrong."- Heinz Alfred 'Henry' Kissinger (1923 - )

Cheers!

RJ (preferred jew aliash)- -

" I don't even have the heart to tell him I've never infestedArizona."- Klaun Shittinb'ricks (1940 - ), acknowledging that he liedfrom the very beginning, A jew scam, as expected

"Actually, it is obvious he's not all there. Most wannabes are shorton IQ and have severe mental problems. I have yet to see a post fromthis cretin that makes sense. Usually, he just does his "You are aNazi........." and even *that* he aped from some other imbecile. Hisother attempts at posting in usenet usually consist of one line oreven one word drivel."- Boadicea, about GBLTP dreckgook Ejershito

Gordon Radovich [***@tiscali.co.uk], the anally-obsessed,unemployable, impotent, glue-huffing, passportless, rope-dodging,pedophilic, bestiality-practicing Serbian coprophiliac nazi-wannabe,hated by Hitler and proven by White Nationalist Scholars to beinferior to Asian peoples, tried to cover up his abject fear of thefascist-slapping, nazi-tormenting, totalitarian-taunting, superiorJews that torture him daily, and reveal his complete and totalignorance, and expose his countless excuses to avoid gettingNuremberged®, by taking time out of his busy schedule of felching hismother for spending money and then masturbating to kiddie porn to lie

Glue-huffers working hard at their full-time jobsNo results found for "employed glue huffer".

ROFLMJAO

___________"I don't even have the heart to tell him I've never lived inArizona."- Me, acknowledging that I lied from the *very beginning*, andtormented the gullible Gordon for MONTHS while sitting back andwatching him come up with pathetic excuse after pathetic excuse fornot coming to holocaust me.

Post by jew pedophile Ron Jacobson (jew pedophile Baruch 'Barry' Shein's jew aliash)"Actually, it is obvious he's not all there. Most wannabes are shorton IQ and have severe mental problems. I have yet to see a post fromthis cretin that makes sense. Usually, he just does his "You are aJew........." and even *that* he aped from some other imbecile. Hisother attempts at posting in usenet usually consist of one line oreven one word drivel."- Boadicea, about GBLTP dreckgook Radovich

That's quite the condemnation, there, Gordon!

Thinking now of upping your game for 2018, or can we expect the same "aping" that you usually do?

Post by The Jewsunemployable, impotent, glue-huffing, passportless, rope-dodging,pedophilic, bestiality-practicing Serbian coprophiliac nazi-wannabe,hated by Hitler and proven by White Nationalist Scholars to beinferior to Asian peoples, tried to cover up his abject fear of thefascist-slapping, nazi-tormenting, totalitarian-taunting, superiorJews that torture him daily, and reveal his complete and totalignorance, and expose his countless excuses to avoid gettingNuremberged®, by taking time out of his busy schedule of felching hismother for spending money and then masturbating to kiddie porn to lie

"Actually, it is obvious he's not all there. Most wannabes are shorton IQ and have severe mental problems. I have yet to see a post fromthis cretin that makes sense. Usually, he just does his "You are aNazi........." and even *that* he aped from some other imbecile. Hisother attempts at posting in usenet usually consist of one line oreven one word drivel."- Boadicea, about GBLTP dreckgook Ejershito

BTW, "cheers"??? Is that what you say when you are about to swallow nazijizz, you housebound cocksucking wanker? <BG>

--Poster "GB" addressing psychopathic loser Razovic on Usenet:"You are so sad and wretched. How could one not feel pity for you? Afoul, loathsome creature, wallowing in your own filth. Never seeing thelight of day. A life utterly wasted."MID: <p3kgc8$qhr$***@dont-email.me>

"Actually, it is obvious he's not all there. Most wannabes are shorton IQ and have severe mental problems. I have yet to see a post fromthis cretin that makes sense. Usually, he just does his "You are aNazi........." and even *that* he aped from some other imbecile. Hisother attempts at posting in usenet usually consist of one line oreven one word drivel."- Boadicea, about GBLTP dreckgook Ejershito

Gordon Radovich [***@tiscali.co.uk], the anally-obsessed,unemployable, impotent, glue-huffing, passportless, rope-dodging,pedophilic, bestiality-practicing Serbian coprophiliac nazi-wannabe,hated by Hitler and proven by White Nationalist Scholars to beinferior to Asian peoples, tried to cover up his abject fear of thefascist-slapping, nazi-tormenting, totalitarian-taunting, superiorJews that torture him daily, and reveal his complete and totalignorance, and expose his countless excuses to avoid gettingNuremberged®, by taking time out of his busy schedule of felching hismother for spending money and then masturbating to kiddie porn to lie

Now nazis , well, they're all a bunch of glue-huffing pussies likeyou!

ROFLMJAO

___________"I don't even have the heart to tell him I've never lived inArizona."- Me, acknowledging that I lied from the *very beginning*, andtormented the gullible Gordon for MONTHS while sitting back andwatching him come up with pathetic excuse after pathetic excuse fornot coming to holocaust me.

Post by jew pedophile Ron Jacobson (jew pedophile Baruch 'Barry' Shein's jew aliash)"Actually, it is obvious he's not all there. Most wannabes are shorton IQ and have severe mental problems. I have yet to see a post fromthis cretin that makes sense. Usually, he just does his "You are aJew........." and even *that* he aped from some other imbecile. Hisother attempts at posting in usenet usually consist of one line oreven one word drivel."- Boadicea, about GBLTP dreckgook Radovich

That's quite the condemnation, there, Gordon!

Thinking now of upping your game for 2018, or can we expect the same "aping" that you usually do?